Religious minorities and secularism: an alternative view of the impact of religion on the political values of Muslims in Europe

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes an alternative explanation of Muslims’ endorsement of secular values based on their belonging to religious minorities. We argue that, contrary to what is often asserted in both the academic literature and the public debate, Muslims’ endorsement of secular values is not simply a matter of strong individual religiosity, but may also result from belonging to a religious minority. We suggest that this group-level variable may explain differences in the support for democratic values by Muslims in Europe, in addition to the individual-level variable pertaining to individual religiosity. Our findings show that belonging to a religious minority in the country of origin positively affects the degree of support of secularist values. More generally, they suggest that denominational Muslim identities should be investigated by taking into account the role of belonging to religious minorities. Moreover, the article will show how belonging to a religious minority can moderate the negative effect of religiosity on secular values.

KEYWORDS:

• Muslims
• religion
• political values
• secularism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Given the limited number of respondents who belong to a religious minority (either Alevis or Ahmadis) and the equally low number of respondents who belong to an ethnic minority (either Berbers or Kurds), we prefer to keep these two variables in separate models.

2. We have set the UK as the category of reference because this is the most multicultural country among the four included in our study in terms of citizenship regimes (Koopmans, Michalowski, and Waibel 2012), which have been shown in previous research to influence to an important extent the ways in which migrants interact with the host society (Koopmans et al. 2005).

3. It should be stressed that in the analysis of Koopmans, Michalowski, and Waibel (2012), Belgium is closer to the UK in terms of multicultural policies, whereas Germany and Switzerland are on the opposite corner of the typology of citizenship regimes, both in terms of individual equality rights and cultural group rights.